Seasons of Bliss (Saskatchewan Saga Book #4) (9 page)

But Vivian was preceding her into the house, and her response, if any, was lost in the rustle of what Molly supposed was the taffeta lining of the four-yard sweep of her skirt.

Sitting in the middle of the table, beside the sack from which it had apparently been removed, was a loaf of bread and a pound of butter, Vivian’s offering and excuse for coming. The incongruity of it—the society belle and the plebeian foodstuff—wasn’t missed by Molly, who might have laughed under different circumstances.

Over the back of a chair, as though she intended to stay a while, was Vivian’s cape of silk brilliantine, its collar trimmed with fine black lace and satin ribbon, and its lining made of changeable silk. A Monday costume! Even Molly’s second-best calico would be changed, as soon as she got home, to something worn and serviceable in preparation for Monday’s laundry, which her mother was sorting even at this moment, while water heated on the stove.

Biting her lip, Molly restrained herself from asking, brightly, of course, “Your Aunt Bea? She’s doing the wash—by herself?”

Immediately stricken, Molly reproached herself:
Molly! Behave yoursel
f
!

And so she spoke more humbly than was normal, for Molly, and spoke honestly, “You look very nice this morning, Vivian. Are you off to the one and only store of our wee hamlet? Or,” she added, growing more uncomfortable as she saw the long-suffering look on the other’s face, “the mail—I’m sure you are looking for mail from home. We still look forward to hearing from family in Scotland—”

It was beyond her. Somehow, Molly sensed, she was missing the mark, and her attempt at conversation faded away. What a mumble-mouth! And she had dared to think she would make a pastor’s wife!

The day, which had been so bright and full of hope, turned dismal for Molly. She wanted only to get out of there, make her run by the store, get back home in time to help her mother, and find normalcy in her household’s routine tasks.

“Sit down, ladies,” Parker was saying, having deposited the box on his round oak table. “The coffeepot is still on, and I’ll be happy to serve you. I think I have three clean cups here—”

Ordinarily Molly would have laughed good-humoredly at Parker’s often-inadequate attempts at housekeeping, counting the days until she should be in residence to do these things for him, and happily so. But Vivian was seating herself at the side of the table, spreading her skirts with a fine and satisfactory rustle, leaning her chin on her ringed hand, and having every semblance of making herself at home.

What must she think of the rude, two-room house, barely more than a cabin? Most of the furnishings were donated; a few were handmade. The stove dominated the living quarters, as it did in most bush homes where, day by day it ate its way through cord after cord of wood. Even in summer it blazed; not a cup of tea could be made without it. Bread had to be baked weekly or oftener; water for anything and everything was heated either on the top of the stove or in the reservoir at the side.

At the side of the stove were a couple of rocking chairs. The round table, set in the center of the room, was covered by a patterned oilcloth; the cupboards were without doors, and Parker’s skimpy supply of household goods were on open display. A cord across one corner held a couple of tea towels and a
dishrag, obviously drying; a few battered pans hung on nails on the whitewashed walls. There were books scattered and piled everywhere. The room beyond was, obviously, the bedroom.

As sharp as Vivian was, there was no way to suppose she hadn’t taken it all in at a glance. Molly watched as Vivian’s eyes turned thoughtfully toward Parker Jones.

Feeling stifled suddenly, Molly wanted to be gone from this young woman’s scrutiny, from her evaluation.

“I really must go—” Molly began her excuse, but realized she wasn’t speaking truth. To feel second rate was one thing; but to dissemble, to be drawn into pathetic untruths, was another thing and quite outside the realm of what Molly would allow of herself. So she checked herself and her stumbling excuse, and tried again.

But neither did she want to put down the other person. So, “It’s wash day,” she began, only to falter again, hesitating on the brink of intimating what any well-brought-up girl should know: Monday was wash day, and washings were a monumental task. Vivian obviously was not involved and apparently not concerned.

“Mum,” she diverted herself into explaining, beginning to perspire, realizing she wasn’t handling the situation well, and feeling the amused eyes of Vivian Condon on her, “is waiting for me to go to the store and bring back some Fels Naptha—”

Fels Naptha! Could anything be more mundane, more uncalled for than a reference to the bar of brown soap that, shaved by hand with a good sharp knife, was added to wash water?

And, sure enough, Vivian’s eyebrows were rising, and her curling lips were asking, “Fels Nap—what?”

Half hysterical—from a mix of emotions, one of which was sheer hilarity at the lunacy of the conversation—Molly caught herself in time to refrain from trilling
“tha, tha, tha
—Fels Nap
tha!”

Who could blame Parker Jones if the coffeepot trembled in his hand, and if his usually firm lips threatened to do the same?

“It’s wash day, Miss Condon,” he said hastily. “Even so, Molly, please stay long enough for a cup of coffee? No? Well, here, let me empty the box—”

Boxes were as treasured as paper bags or wax paper or writing paper . . . so many things were in small supply, in the bush, or no supply at all, and were used and reused until every shred of usefulness was wrung from them. Except for that, Molly would have fled the premises. As it was, she waited, carrying on some sort of feeble but safe conversation with Vivian, until Parker had emptied the box of its contents—bread, a pound of butter, enough meat from yesterday’s dinner to make a meal, leftover cake.

“I wish you’d stop a moment,” he said again, and Molly, who knew him well, recognized again the urge in his word.

But the too-patient face of Vivian Condon spoke otherwise; it was obvious she was simply out-waiting Molly.

Molly—if she could help it—would be no hindrance! Molly would do battle for nothing, nor for anyone, even Parker Jones.

“Mum’s waiting,” she said quietly, and Parker Jones, just as quiet, followed her to the buggy.

Helping her up into the rig, untying Kip, and stepping back to her side, Parker spoke in a low voice, “I hoped you’d stay until . . . that is—”

“This is something, Parker, that you’ll have to handle yourself.”

Though much of what had happened inside was laughable—and Molly could feel a sort of hysterical giggle struggling to erupt—still she knew beyond all doubt that it was not her place to rescue Parker Jones from Vivian Condon or any other female.

“But—”

Molly left Parker Jones standing looking after her and had to harden her heart. Much as she wanted to fly to his aid, to clean—as a ruffled mother bird—her nest and make it her own again, she felt it was not hers to do.

Her last glimpse back, as Kip whirled the buggy out of the yard and in the direction of Bliss and the general store, was the face of Vivian Condon in the doorway of the parsonage, a small smile on her lips.

T
ierney crept into the house not the same vital, spirited, winsome girl who left it not more than an hour ago with Rob Dunbar. Even Lydia, who knew her very little as yet, could tell something was terribly amiss with her new “help.”

Tierney hesitated inside the kitchen door, still a stranger to the house and its occupants, and uncertain of herself and her responsibilities in this moment. Needing to seek the privacy of her own room, her right to do so was in question. She was, after all, the hired girl, a “domestic.”

Lydia had been hanging up the last damp tea towel. Turning to look at Tierney, her plump face showed its shock. Here was this bright-faced young woman—girl, really, for she couldn’t be more than nineteen—with the happiness blighted from her face, and her lips taut and white. Lydia, a mother and a grandmother, couldn’t let this go, she simply couldn’t.

“Oh, my dear,” she said spontaneously and gently, her loving concern evident in her tone.

It was almost more than Tierney could take and retain her last bit of self-control.

“Ma’am,” she began, and it was a pathetic attempt at normality.

But her new employer’s arms were around her. Her new employer was saying things that only mothers and grandmothers say, or very dear and close friends. It was too much for Tierney. The tears, which had been held sternly in check, spouted and ran.

This is wrong, all wrong!
her common sense cried.
What would Ishbel Mountjoy say!

To come to a new place, be on the job no more than twenty-four hours, bring your special friend into their midst to be fed, skip doing the cleanup and go for a walk with him, only to come back in a collapse of tears, was most unacceptable. Tierney made a brave but futile effort to get control.

It was the arms of Lydia Bloom that were her undoing; it was the crooning comfort of her murmured words. It was the tender pats on the back. Tierney, taller than Lydia by a good six inches, sagged helplessly against the motherly bosom.

The sound of buggy wheels going past outside, fading quickly away, brought Tierney’s head up. Then, with a desperately white and resigned expression on her face, she took a deep breath, stared over Lydia’s gray head, and spoke.

“He—Robbie—is to marry . . . someone else.”

Lydia’s eyes widened, but without saying anything she guided Tierney to a chair at the side of the kitchen table, handing her a nearby serviette that she had been going to toss into the laundry. Tierney took it gratefully.

There were a few quiet moments as Tierney mopped her eyes and drew several more deep and shaky breaths. Lydia, standing at her side, waited patiently.

Lydia wanted Tierney to be able to talk, but to pry was not in her. So, “I’m sorry,” she said gently, leaving the way open if the girl cared to confide in her, but asking no questions.

“It’s his neighbor, Alice—”

“Alice Hoy, of course,” Lydia supplied and was not surprised. Deaths and remarriages, on the prairie and in the bush, were a way of life. Mates died, and the remaining partners turned to anyone who was available, especially if there were children. Barnabas Hoy had died a few weeks ago; Rob Dunbar was near and, everyone had supposed, available.

“Aye, Alice. With two bairns. Robbie is willin’ . . . is willin’,” the tears threatened again and were choked back. “Robbie is goin’ to marry her and raise her two boys.”

It’s her land, of course
, Lydia said to herself.
He wants her land
.

“You mustn’t blame Robbie,” Tierney said, and though it was a generous thing to say, the need to say it made it pathetic.

“Y’ see, he issna promised to me,” her lips explained.

But I was promised to him!
her heart cried.

And she had thought he was promised to her. The bonds between them had been that tight, that solid, that real.

Lydia was wise enough to offer no platitudes. Nothing like “You’ll feel better in the morning,” “He’ll think it over, and things will change,” “Alice won’t hold him to it, now that you’re here, if he’ll explain.”

Neither did she—wise, wise woman—offer the dreadful consolation of the truth that Alice Hoy had not long to live, and then—

Still, later, when she was in bed, wrestling with heartbreak and trying to accept it, it was that thought—that Alice was not long for this world—that kept occurring to Tierney, troubling her greatly.

Robbie—with face averted and obviously shame-faced—had brought up that very thing.

“Tierney,” he had said, having seen her first look of disbelief turn to dreadful realization, her astonishment to anguish, “she—Alice, that is—canna live more than a few months, a
year at the most. She’s told me that hersel’. Then,” though his eyes couldn’t meet hers, he said it; doggedly he said it: “Then we could marry. Then, Tierney, I can offer you a decent place to live, a working farm, and—”

“And do ye think I care aboot all that!” Tierney had cried, breaking into Robbie’s words almost with horror. “Dinna say sich things! Dinna think them!”

“Tierney,” he had said then, taking her hand in his and speaking pleadingly, “I had no idea you were anywhere on the continent. As far as I knew, we’d niver see each other again.”

Tierney knew it was true. Still, no matter where he was or how long it would be until she might hear of him again, her heart had been irrevocably given to Robbie Dunbar. And his heart, she had thought with every fiber of her being, had been pledged to her.

“Robbie,” she said, “I think I could bear it better if you were to tell me you were in love . . . I could understand that. But this—this cold-blooded marryin’ for what you can git out of it—”

“It’s not like that, at all, at all,” Robbie defended quickly. “She needs me, Tierney; dinna y’ see the difference that makes?”

“Are there not many bachelors lookin’ for wives? Isna it a well-known fact that there’s not nearly enough lassies to go aroun’? Why ye, Robbie?”